FTSE 100 listed Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust have significant holdings in the chipmaker which has also been a huge supporter of UK and European tech firms.

Nvidia has lost $550bn (£415bn) in stock market value in just five days amid revelations about the now-departed chief executive’s alleged extramarital affairs.

According to the latest published data, the company represented 7.1% of total assets at Baillie Gifford US Growth Trust (31 October) and 3.2% at Scottish Mortgage (31 March).

The crisis erupted after it emerged that Huang had an affair with Alice Huang, no relation, whom the US government suspected of being a Chinese spy. On Wednesday night it emerged that Mr Huang was facing allegations of another affair with Kimberly Powell, an executive at the company. Mr Huang has been summoned to testify next month before a Senate committee.

Shares in the company tumbled on the news. They hit a record high of $239.24 last month, valuing the business at more than $5 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable public company. Last night they closed 4.3% lower at $166.19, giving Nvidia a value of $3.92trn, well below Apple’s $5.2trn. 

The company announced that Colette Kress, the company’s executive vice president and chief financial officer since 2013, will become interim chief executive.

The crisis comes at a crucial point for the UK and Europe’s AI development. Nvidia is among the most active US investors in Europe, underpinning its ambitions to build homegrown AI champions by supplying the chips powering AI projects while investing billions in the UK and European startup ecosystem.

As such it has supported some of the continent’s biggest scaleups, such as fintech giant Revolut, Basecamp Research, Ineffable Intelligence, Synthesia and Wayve. It made a five-year, $250m compute commitment to strengthen the UK’s agentic safety and security research. 

The Nvidia crisis has compounded a bad few weeks for the AI sector after investors sold tech shares on fears that the US midterm elections would slow the development of the technology.